Dennis Volkert: Comedy:?In one month and out the other

Dennis Volkert

Monday

Feb 28, 2011 at 12:01 AMFeb 28, 2011 at 1:04 AM

Whenever I hear “March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb,”?it reminds me of a “Saturday Night?Live” sketch from long ago. During a Weekend Update in the late ‘70s, John Belushi presented a guest commentary to discuss “in like a lion, out like a lamb.”?He claimed the saying was specific to the United States, and that the phrase was somewhat different in other countries.

Whenever I hear “March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb,”?it reminds me of a “Saturday Night?Live” sketch from long ago.

During a Weekend Update in the late ‘70s, John Belushi presented a guest commentary to discuss “in like a lion, out like a lamb.”?He claimed the saying was specific to the United States, and that the phrase was somewhat different in other countries.

An example (from memory): “There are nine different countries where March comes in like a frog and goes out like a golden retriever.”

I thought that was pretty clever.

I considered customizing Belushi’s in-like-a-lion bit for this week’s column. I figured most people would not remember that sketch, since I don’t think it appeared on SNL?reruns that aired on?Comedy Central, and wasn’t tied to Belushi’s most endearing/enduring characters.

My plan was to take Belushi’s idea and apply it to other months. Example: “July comes in like late June, and goes out like early August.”

But I didn’t. If you’re going to borrow something, you should either improve upon it, or try not to un-improve upon it.

For example, when?I was watching the Grammys earlier this month, it featured a special Grammy top 10 list from?David Letterman. At No. 3: “Lady Antebellum and Lady Gaga form supergroup Lady Antegagum.”

That sounded strangely familiar. I checked my column from Jan. 8, in which I made silly predictions for 2011. One entry was, “Pop star Lady Gaga joins country band Lady Antebellum to form a new supergroup, Gagabellum Starship.”

I thought mine was funnier.

I’m not saying Letterman’s writers stole my joke. If they did, I’m flattered. If they didn’t, well, I can smugly declare that I thought mine was funnier.

Is it possible someone stole my material??You never know. Maybe somebody read the column online, passed it along to another somebody, and it eventually ended up as part of a top 10 list.

Anything’s possible. People once thought the world was flat or that New Coke was deliberate reverse-psychology marketing. Some of them were even the same people.
You never know. I got an e-mail a few days ago about last week’s column. It linked me to a website promoting a new documentary about Alan Turing.

No way I could have anticipated that. That’s so unlikely, even a thinking machine couldn’t do it.

We do know this. March is almost here. In like Belushi, out like Letterman.

Contact Dennis Volkert at volkert@sturgisjournal.com.

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